Trump Clocked In At McDonald's and Walz Calls Out Pandering

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 In the staged event on Sunday, Trump was in a McDonald's in Pennsylvania "serving" up fries for customers to depict his ability to empathize and connect with the working class. While this could be in good faith, many were quick to jump at Trump for pandering to working class audiences by pretending to work at McDonald's. According to an article by CNN, the store was closed for a campaign stop, and Trump decided to put an apron on and work as a fry attendant. 


Many politicians like Tim Walz were quick to point out this as blatant pandering, as Trump has never had to work a fast food, low income job in his life. Not to mention the store was closed during the event, and he did not serve customers outside of the campaign event he was doing. According to an article by The Hollywood Reporter, Walz spoke about how he and Harris grew up middle class and had to work for what they had. He mentioned how Harris actually worked at McDonald's and did not pander and disrespect the workers by standing around to take pictures. 

Walz later explains how policies Trump will try to enforce and enact go against those who do work at lower income establishments like McDonald's, and that he is not doing anything to help the middle class in his policy. 

In a close election cycle where pandering to audiences is inevitable, making sure the pandering appears authentic and relatable is good to maintaining a positive image and reputation. Harris and Trump have their fair share of moments where they pander, but they need to be strategic in how their policies will impact the people they pander towards before doing it.

References

Phillips, Z (2024) "Tim Walz Calls Donald Trump's Viral Trip to McDonald's Disrespectful Pandering" The Hollywood Reporter https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/politics-news/tim-walz-donald-trump-mcdonalds-disrespectful-daily-show-1236040836/

Valinsky, J (2024) "McDonald's Didn't Give Trump Permission to Serve Fries. It Didn't Need to" CNN https://www.cnn.com/2024/10/21/business/mcdonalds-trump-visit-statement/index.html 

Comments

  1. CaitlinOctober 27, 2024 at 7:33 AM

    This is such a good call. I absolutely agree that this was pandering from Trump and seems pretty tone deaf when consider, as you said, that Harris actually did work at McDonalds. How do you think Trump should appeal to the general public instead? Of course, anything may be better!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Aleceia ChapmanOctober 29, 2024 at 12:50 PM

    As we get down to the wire with the presidential election, we can see that both trump and harris are pulling out all the props in order to gain last minute vote. One of trump's main critiques is that his millionaire status makes him out of touch with the middle class, so to fix this he did a couple of tasks at mcdonalds. It's easy to tell that he is pandering to middle class voters, however after it was revealed that the McDonalds was in fact closed and people he was serving was not real customers comes off as insulting under the guise that he is playing dress up at someone's job where they make their livelihood.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Camren HardyNovember 21, 2024 at 7:24 PM

    Yes! I made a post about this event too and I actually talked about how this event served two purposes. First like you mentioned this was all about pandering. Trump wanted to be seen working with the common man to appeal to the common man, because "if President Trump is back here working with us then he cares about us". I also wanted to just note though that this event was also intended to mess with the Harris campaign as well. Harris had stated that she had worked at McDonalds over the summer when she was younger, which Trump responded to claiming she didn't. So this was also intended to say "Kamala you haven't worked at McDonalds but I have"

    ReplyDelete

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